{"id":4194,"date":"2019-09-20T22:32:37","date_gmt":"2019-09-20T22:32:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euromenaenergy.com\/?p=4194"},"modified":"2019-09-20T22:32:37","modified_gmt":"2019-09-20T22:32:37","slug":"california-weighs-plan-to-save-tropical-forests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/?p=4194","title":{"rendered":"California weighs plan to save tropical forests"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Julia Rosen \/Los Angeles Times<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The smoke is still rising from the Amazon as fires smoulder in the world\u2019s largest rain forest. The blazes triggered a wave of global outrage over the loss of precious trees. But California says it has a plan to keep tropical forests standing.
\nThis week, state officials will consider a proposal to protect these forests by steering billions of dollars to countries such as Brazil. The money would fund government efforts to fight deforestation and promote sustainable industries that don\u2019t involve chopping down and burning trees. And it would come from companies that offset their own emissions by purchasing carbon credits through markets such as California\u2019s cap-and-trade programme.
\nPreserving tropical rain forests is essential to combating climate change \u2013 around the world, roughly a third of the greenhouse gases released each year come from clearing forests. And backers say this plan is the best way to funnel much-needed cash toward that crucial task.
\nOthers agree on the pressing need to halt deforestation, but they say California\u2019s plan is a dangerously misguided way to do it. In their view, it would simply allow polluters to keep on polluting without doing anything about the true drivers of forest loss: rising demand for products such as beef, soy and palm oil.
\nThe issue has divided scientists, environmental groups and indigenous leaders who say the Tropical Forest Standard, or TFS, has ramifications far beyond the Golden State. California is a leader on climate change, and approving the TFS could inspire other states, countries and companies to adopt a similar approach.
\n\u201cThis is a critical moment,\u201d said ecologist Christina McCain, who heads the Environmental Defense Fund\u2019s climate initiatives in Latin America. \u201cThe world is watching.\u201d
\nThe TFS wouldn\u2019t be the first attempt to fund forest protection through carbon offsets. Several international programmes have employed them as a way to preserve and restore forests while lowering the cost of reducing emissions in wealthy countries and funding sustainable development in poorer ones.
\nSome of these projects succeeded, but others never came to fruition, leaving the fate of the carbon they promised to store in limbo. Many also spelled disaster for people who live in the forest.
\nIndigenous groups fell prey to unscrupulous \u201ccarbon cowboys\u201d who used questionable methods to secure the rights to native land \u2013 and its potentially lucrative carbon. People were kicked out of their territories by governments eager to launch conservation projects without local interference.
\nIn any event, the programmes never attracted enough money to reach their intended scale, said Louis Verchot of the Center for International Forestry Research, who has studied previous initiatives.
\n\u201cIt wasn\u2019t what you would call a real enabling environment,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s where things are stuck right now.\u201d
\nCan the Tropical Forest Standard do better? Its backers certainly think so. They\u2019ve spent the last decade trying to learn from past mistakes.
\nThe TFS lays out criteria for certifying state, provincial or national governments that want to sell forest offsets, leaving no room for carbon cowboys. Participating governments must commit to reducing deforestation, and they\u2019ll only receive credit for the forest they spare beyond their baseline goal.
\nPlans must be posted publicly, and progress must be closely monitored and independently verified.
\n\u201cThere will be a ton of eyes on it,\u201d said Jason Gray, the head of California\u2019s cap-and-trade programme.
\nGovernments also have to prove that local stakeholders \u2013 especially indigenous groups – have a say in the programme and stand to benefit from it. The Brazilian state of Acre, which has spent years developing partnerships with tribes, is often cited as a model.
\n\u201cIndigenous peoples are very well-informed and prepared not to let their rights be violated,\u201d said Francisca Oliviera de Lima, a member of Shawadawa People who works at Acre\u2019s state-run Climate Change Institute. \u201cWe are in favour of this California programme.\u201d
\nThe TFS tries to address other problems, such as leakage, which occurs when suppressing deforestation in one place simply pushes it elsewhere. That would be difficult to get away with in a state that\u2019s part of the programme, said Steve Schwartzman, senior director of tropical forest policy at EDF, a leading supporter of the TFS.
\nIn addition, the TFS mandates that participating states and provinces pony up extra credits as insurance, in case fires or other natural disasters accidentally release carbon that was stored for offsets.
\nWith these safeguards in place, proponents argue the TFS could finally allow real money to flow toward fighting deforestation. Today, less than 1.5% of funding to fight climate change goes to forest protection, according to a new analysis by a coalition of scientific organisations and environmental groups.
\nThat has bred frustration in countries such as Brazil, where the government had reduced deforestation by upping enforcement of protected areas but where low levels of investment have failed to create new economic opportunities for farmers, loggers and miners who obeyed the rules, said Dan Nepstad, executive director of the Earth Innovation Institute.
\nWith the TFS, offset money could fund things such as community centres, fish ponds for aquaculture and government programme to support sustainable farming practices.
\nFor California, the reward is the chance to drive greenhouse gas reductions far beyond what the state could accomplish at home, Nepstad said: \u201cThe TFS lays out the framework for magnifying that tenfold.\u201d
\nCritics of the TFS object to almost everything about it, starting with the very idea of offsets.
\nHe and other opponents say California\u2019s cap-and-trade programme already relies too heavily on offsets \u2013 polluters can use them to cancel up to 8% of their emissions in the state \u2013 and argue that the TFS would take things even further in the wrong direction.
\nChief among their concerns is the legitimacy of tropical forest credits.
\nBarbara Haya, who studies offset programmes at the University of California, Berkeley, worries that leakage will still be a problem, since activities shut out of a participating state can still shift to other states or countries.
\nIt\u2019s also hard to ensure that the programme will dole out credit only for carbon savings that wouldn\u2019t have happened anyway. Haya examined two decades\u2019 worth of data and found that a quarter of potential partners would have been able to generate offsets under the TFS\u2019s rules due to declining deforestation rates, even though their progress clearly wasn\u2019t due to the programme (it didn\u2019t yet exist).
\nThen there\u2019s the fear that, despite the TFS\u2019s insurance provision, the carbon that was supposed to offset a polluter\u2019s emissions will end up in the atmosphere eventually, either in a bad fire season or after a change in political leadership reverses a country\u2019s deforestation policies.
\nOthers contend that the TFS is based on flawed economic reasoning. So far, the price of carbon offsets on exchange markets is just too low to compete against the forces of global commerce, which make land more valuable than trees, said Tracey Osborne, a geographer at the University of Arizona.
\nAnd while advocates for indigenous communities applaud the TFS\u2019s social safeguards, some of them say it will be nearly impossible to ensure they are being honoured from afar.
\nGovernments in many tropical countries have a long history of corruption, said Alberto Saldamando, an advisor to the Indigenous Environmental Network. He worries the TFS will only heighten the incentive to coerce or threaten indigenous groups to participate in programmes that don\u2019t always serve their interests.
\n\u201cCarbon, instead of being a poison, is a value, and that perspective leads to all kinds of abuses,\u201d he said.
\nOpponents raised all these issues last fall, when California\u2019s Air Resources Board first met to consider the standard. It opted to delay a vote and asked legislators to gather input from both sides. If the board endorses the standard when it meets on Thursday, it won\u2019t mean that credits generated under the TFS will be used in the state\u2019s market right away; governments that want to participate would first have to qualify, and then CARB would have to decide whether to accept tropical offsets, Gray said. The motivation to propose the standard now is \u201cto set a very high bar\u201d for forest offset programmes\u00a0 in general, he said.
\nRegardless of whether California ever uses the TFS in its own cap-and-trade programme, CARB\u2019s approval would be a powerful endorsement of forest offsets and a setback for efforts to zero out greenhouse gas emissions, opponents said.
\nCritics would rather see the state focus on other strategies for preserving forests, such as empowering indigenous groups to protect their lands and pressuring companies to rid their supply chains of goods associated with deforestation. (California lawmakers are considering a bill that would require government contractors to do so.)
\nHaya and more than 100 other researchers laid out their objections to the TFS and submitted them to CARB. Last month, senator Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont, released his own letter imploring the board to reject it.
\nBut supporters are speaking up, too.
\nIn June, four Assembly members encouraged CARB to approve the standard as long as it commits to \u201cvigorous and proactive monitoring\u201d of any government that uses it. More than 100 scientists also penned an open letter endorsing the TFS. \u2013 Tribune News Service<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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